Monthly Archives: October 2012

The tradition is adamant about belief in the resurrection of the dead as evidenced by the statement that “whoever denies the resurrection of the dead will have no share in it” (Sanhedrin 90b), as if to say that if you doubt it, you don’t belong there in the first place.

In reference to the eeriness of it and the out-and-out other-worldliness of something that’s so far removed from human experience, the Talmud underscores the point that “the resurrection of the dead will be accomplished by God, who alone holds the key to it” (Ta’anit 2a, Sanhedrin 113a).

Rambam made it the last of his thirteen articles of faith, which, as worded in AniMa’amin, reads: “I firmly believe that there will be a revival of the dead at a time which will please the Creator, blessed be His name.” He did, though, contend that it would only be experienced by the righteous in his comments to the Mishna (Sanhedrin 10:1), but many argued against that view and affirmed a resurrection for all dead (Abarbanel in his Ma’yeneiYeshu’ah 2:9 and Menashe ben Israel, in his NishmatḤayyim 1:2:8).

But perhaps the most elegant affirmation of it is the one we’re asked to offer each and every morning when we say, “O God, the soul which You have set within me is pure. You Have fashioned it; You have breathed it into me, You keep it within me, and will take it from me and restore it to me in time to come. As long as it is within me I will give homage to You, divine Master, Lord of all spirits, who returns soul to dead bodies” (Berachot 60b).

While Job enunciated the universal longing for the Resurrection of the Dead by saying, “Can the dead live again? If so, this would give me hope through all my years of struggle, and I would eagerly await the release of death”, (14:14), and Daniel promised it when he said that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (12:2), Ezekiel laid out the details in Ch. 37 of his book.

He said that “the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Lord God, you alone know.”Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will make spirit enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the spirit; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Lord God says: Come, spirit, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.Then He said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Lord God says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, My people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’” (vs. 1-14).

After speaking in general about humankind above, Ramchal depicts the relationship between our souls and our bodies [1], and then he takes us on an excursion into the Resurrection of the Dead and the World to Come in relation to the ultimate rectification [2]. So we’ll present the traditional view of those two epoch events, the Zohar’s perspective on them, Ramchal’s views elsewhere, and finally, and what he adds to that here in our section.

Ramchal declares that the repairing of the final degreedepends on human input, for humanity is meant to strengthen the power of holiness. Once that’s accomplished there’ll no longer be wrong, and everything will serve only to manifest the glory of the Creator… Everything will revert to helping to perfect the “basic foundation” that was established so that all of creation would be of one accord … which will lead to the revelation of God’s sovereignty…. Light will complete its entry into all the vessels…and everything will be in a state of utter repair (Petach 48). And he declares that the truly wrongful was always mean to revert to goodness through the repairs carried out by humankind (Petach 49).

Finally, he lays out some more details in his comments to Petach 48. He offers that “God’s Supreme Will originally desired that He Himself would begin (the process of universal rectification) while allowing man to complete it. Thus, when humanity’s work will be finished that will complete the entire process, and a state of (utter) repair will reign”. For, “the repair of this last level will depend on the actions of humanity… For this is in fact what the Supreme Mind allowed for in order to provide for the possibility of reward and punishment. For (while God Himself) separated rah from the supernal Sephirot He nevertheless left its complete removal in the hands of humanity”.

As such, “this is the difference between the repair brought on by the hands of Heaven and the one brought on by humanity: everything that involved an innovation (i.e., an instance of the creation of something out of nothing) could only be brought about by the hands of Heaven, but what simply involved bolstering the repair and making it permanent was to be accomplished by humanity”.

As we said before our YomTov break, Ar”i and the other Kabbalists spoke at great length about just how primal mankind is to it all, and that we’d next see just what Ramchal said elsewhere about this, so here goes.

For one thing, like nearly all Jewish Sages before and subsequent to him, Ramchal differentiated between the role of the Jewish Nation and that of others. He dedicated an entire chapter to that in DerechHashem: 2:4. He acknowledges that both share the same physiology and biology but offers that in the eyes of the Torah, though, the two groups are wholly different. He explains that difference by depicting Adam and Eve’s makeup (and their immediate prodigy’s) since they were neither Jewish or not. His point is that Adam and Eve’s misstep undid the unique connection mankind had with God and the universe, and that no one restored that until Abraham, the first Jew (and that that role was reinforced but the giving of the Torah to his descendants who accepted it upon themselves so willingly). The clear implication is that there needn’t have been a differentiation between Jewish and non-Jewish roles in the universe: that breakdown is an acknowledgement of the sanctity of all that Abraham did and allowed for in the universe. As such, the role incumbent upon the Jewish Nation now is to recover what had been lost by Adam and Eve’s sin, and to accomplish what they could have but didn’t besides [1].

Note:

[1] For more on Adam and Eve’s role and downfall see Adir Bamarom p. 29; for the difference between Abraham and Jacob’s role see Biurim al Tanach, Parshat Va’Era (OtzrotRamchal p. 39); for more on the other nations see Adir Bamarom p. 380; and see Da’at Tevunot on Adam and Eve at 72, 78, 126, and on the role and makeup of the Jewish Nation at 36, 126, 130, 134, 158, 160.